Patrick Hodgson is right to question the traffic and train numbers through Wallan-garra (then so spelt) in 1944.

The claim that the amount of ammunition moved during peak periods during 1944 was approximately 9000 tons per day can be dismissed after consideration of QR traffic statistics. QR did not publish the usual statistics of traffic at stations during the war years, but after the war these were published in a large supplement to the 1947 Annual Report. (One ton equals 1.016 tonnes).

Military traffic was not secret. There are several references in the Annual Reports published during the war to its extent and/or the way it increased overall traffic levels. The total traffic by category moved on the system as a whole for any year, including war related traffic, and the total of that forwarded from stations, agree.

Ammunition was explosives, and it paid General Merchandise rates.

"Moved" can be interpreted in different ways, especially considering that at Wallan-garra there were the Commonwealth Store Siding and the Commonwealth Military Siding, connected to both Queensland and NSW systems. Ammunition could come from NSW into store and be later reconsigned ex store on to the QR, the transfer from and to wagon being presumably handled by military personnel or civilians engaged by the military. Alternatively it could have been transhipped direct from NSW to Queensland wagons, the work done by QR staff or contractors. Given the wartime shortage of labour, military personnel might have been drafted to assist.

Some ammunition could have moved from Queensland into NSW, and some could have moved by road. Given the strategic situation at the time, and the shortages of road vehicles and petroleum fuel, both of those possibilities are unlikely.

The QR statistics should therefore capture all the "movement" except for any goods moved from NSW into store and left there.

The following QR statistics cover the two financial years which include calendar 1944, and the two preceding years. Livestock is excluded (significant numbers of cattle were railed into Wallan-garra from the QR for killing at meatworks in the area).

Note (a) No breakdown is available of goods inward/southbound by category.

Northbound goods not categorised were insignificant in the total. Agricultural produce dominated general merchandise, and most of it was despatched from Wallan-garra. Wallan-garra and nearby places in NSW were not large scale agricultural areas. The reason for these large quantities consigned from Wallan-garra itself is that agricultural produce (foodstuff) was consigned to merchants/agents at Wallan-garra, who traded in these goods, and arranged their sale to buyers in Queensland, transhipment and onward despatch. The agricultural produce in (B) should be considered to be in (A). Presumably, the large number of forces personnel in Queensland during these years required the import of greater than normal quantities of food.

The total of general merchandise despatched from Wallan-garra for the two financial years which include calendar 1944(*items) is 71,400 tons or 114 tons per day excluding Sundays. If the tonnage of all goods from Queensland into Wallan-garra, transhipped or not (¶ items), is added, in case ammunition was moving both ways, the total is 232,200 tons, or 372 tons per day.

Annual totals can of course hide extreme peaks. It is nevertheless all but impossible for 9000 tons per day to have been moved in any sense at all. Not only are the totals of general merchandise despatched from Wallan-garra in both 1943-44 and 1944-45 less than in 1942-3, they represent in each year only four days at the rate of 9000 tons per day.

9000 tons was an enormous quantity to move in a day. Some perspective on this can be obtained by considering that at Clapham, Brisbane, a considerable transhipment facility, the tons transhipped per day in 1959-60 (assuming a 300 working day year) was 300 from 3 ft 6 ins to standard gauge, and 50 in the other direction (a lot of freight arriving Brisbane by rail from NSW was consigned to Brisbane businesses, and worked on, repackaged etc, before being sent on to other parts of Queensland). Further, the total of general merchandise despatched per day on the whole QR in that year on the same basis was 3940. Even Roma Street goods yard in Brisbane, probably then at about its peak, despatched only 700 tons of general merchandise per day.

If 9000 tons was moved at Wallan-garra per day at the peak in 1944, the QR did not play a part in it. Considering the statistics, 900 tons per day would be possible for a short peak, but still exceptional. The same applies to 9000 tons per week or per month.

Even for these alternative periods and quantities, accommodating and feeding etc the men involved would have been considerable tasks which should have left a record of some kind.

The traffic train mileage (ie excluding trains run for QR’s own purposes, like ballast) are also available for the Warwick to Wallan-garra section in Annual Reports. They include trains run from Warwick to serve the Amiens branch from its junction at Cotton Vale. From the train miles run on that branch, it is possible to calculate the number of trains to Amiens each year and deduct their mileage from the Warwick to Wallan-garra section. What is left divided by 365 days per year and two directions gives the number of trains each way per day between Warwick and Wallan-garra. No doubt there are some small discrepancies from trains which did not proceed throughout the section, but they can be ignored given the huge difference between what ran and the number of trains claimed. The number of trains each way per day between Warwick and Wallan-garra was -

The numbers will include the peaks for the cattle and fruit seasons, but, so long as these were much the same each year, the effect of the additional traffic induced by the war should still be identifiable, the addition to say 2.6, a maximum of about three additional trains each way per day in 1943-44.

Annual figures can hide short peaks, just as with the annual traffic statistics above. It is not hard to see however that if a peak occurred for say four weeks in 1943-44, and was responsible for all the claimed extra trains that year compared with 1942-43, the number of extra trains per day each way in that four weeks could not have exceeded four or so, giving with the 1942-43 trains, a total of nine or ten.

Finally, there is the capacity of the line given by the crossing loops and running times. Following John Kerr’s article on the Centenary of the Southern Line (A R H S Bulletin 398, December 1970, p 261), it is known that additional loops and signalling were provided at Morgan Park and Lyra as the war situation developed, but there is no record that they were opened as crossing loops. From the 1941 and 1950 Working Timetables, it is clear that the major constraint on the capacity of the line south of Warwick were the sections Warwick to Omoral (55 minutes up and 50 down for a full load goods train) and Ballandean to Wallan-garra (44 and 33). There was no scope with the layouts at the crossing stations for two trains in one direction to cross two in the other without long delays and shunting. Even if a second train had followed one in the same direction at the allowable intervals of ten minutes in daylight and twenty at night, that could have happened in only one direction and would have reduced capacity in the other direction, and would have led to problems of yard capacity at Warwick and Wallan-garra, not to say Toowoomba. In general, the workable capacity of the line south of Warwick was about twelve trains per day each way, and that would have required rapid turnround at Wallan-garra to avoid congestion there becoming a constraint (see below). Thirty per day each way was absolutely impossible.

Even if Morgan Park had been opened as a crossing loop, Morgan Park to Omoral would have been the constraining section on the line (times 43 and 39 minutes), improving its workable capacity to about 14 trains each way per day.

All trains arriving and leaving Wallan-garra would have needed breaking up and assembling respectively, let alone shunting as the transhipping work progressed. No large scale alterations are recorded in the yard (as opposed to the military sidings) at Wallan-garra in the years concerned, certainly nothing which could deal with both the breaking up and putting together of a train every 48 minutes (the equivalent of 30 trains per day, evenly spaced).

(running times from QR Working Timetables)

From every consideration examined, the claims that 9000 tons of ammunition were "moved" and thirty QR trains came into Wallan-garra per day at peak times in 1944 must be regarded historically as fantasy. It is irresponsible for those concerned to have put forward such figures as fact.

I am grateful to Patrick Hodgson for explaining the trading in agricultural produce by merchants and agents at Wallan-garra.

27 September 2004, amended 6 July 2009 to include the explanation of the trading in agricultural produce by merchants and agents at Wallan-garra.